Featured Free Software

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Getting music on your iPod without iTunes

I have 2 iPods, and my wife has a Nano. When you have a bunch of them, it gets confusing whose iPod is registered or synced to which computer, etc. Of course, my wife's iPod was set up with a computer that my daughter took with her when she got married and left home. We are probably getting my daughter a Nano for college graduation as well...shhh, she doesn't know yet (and I doubt she will read this, since it's not on MySpace). So many iPods, and so few computers. My old computer doesn't even have iTunes, and I'm trying to keep it relatively clean of bloat, so I needed to find a way to update/add music to the army of iPods I have laying around. I found a great utility called YamiPod (Yet Another Manager for iPod), which does exactly what I need.YamiPod is free, but the author encourages donations, and it is worth it. Coming in at a svelt 5mb in terms of download size, and using only a tiny percent of processor/mem to function are some of the things that make this iTunes replacement very attractive. Uhh, "replacement" is a little strong in this case, as you will still need to go through all the rigamarole of using the iPod installer, and iTunes setup when you initially configure your iPod, as well as sync some music to your pod before Yamipod will work. It's great for me (simple song-sync from a home computer sans iTunes), but for folks who want all the bells and whistles, or who have bought a new iPod in need of configuration, will still have to rely on iTunes. Here's a list of some of the great features in this lightweight alternative: